COURTESY OF HAWAII FOREST & TRAIL
Picnic by day and stargaze by night on the Mauna Kea Summit & Stars Adventure.

On a stare-way to the heavens

I have been to the threshold of heaven, a place high above the clouds where the Hawaiians say the gods live, a place so sacred that in ancient times only priests and alii (royalty) of the highest rank could enter it.

Mauna Kea Summit & Stars Adventure

Meet at: Hawaii Forest & Trail's headquarters on Queen Kaahumanu Highway 19, across Honokohau Harbor, behind the Tesoro service station, about three miles north of Kailua-Kona town

Offered: 2 to 10 p.m. daily

Cost: $169 per person, including dinner, a dessert of chocolate macadamia nut cookies and hot chocolate, and the use of gloves and hooded parkas. Participants must be at least 16 years old, in good physical condition and be able to walk on uneven, rocky terrain. Kamaaina receive a 15 percent discount.

Call: 331-8505 on Big Island; toll-free (800) 464-1993 from the other islands

Careful! Things to know before you go

Minimum nighttime winter temperatures at the summit are around 25 degrees; maximum daytime temperatures are about 40 degrees, but wind chill and the high altitude can make it seem much colder. Between April and November the weather is milder, with daytime temperatures varying from freezing to nearly 60 degrees.

At the summit elevation, the atmospheric pressure is 40 percent less than at sea level. Less oxygen is available to the lungs, and acute mountain sickness is common. Symptoms include headaches, drowsiness, nausea, shortness of breath and poor judgment.

The summit is usually arid. To prevent dehydration, drink plenty of water prior to and during your visit. The summit is above much of the atmosphere that blocks the sun's ultraviolet radiation. This presents a risk of serious sunburn and eye damage, particularly when there is snow on the ground.

Children under 16, pregnant women and people with respiratory, heart or severe overweight conditions are advised not to go higher than the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy (9,200-foot elevation). Scuba divers must wait at least 24 hours after their last dive before traveling to the summit (the exact waiting period depends on the length and depth of their dive).

There at the chilly, barren summit of Mauna Kea volcano, the sole contrast to the bleak gray-brown terrain is the sky, an endless canvas of brilliant blue that transforms at night into a panorama of black velvet embroidered with stars.

On a recent winter day, I joined nine other participants on Hawaii Forest & Trail's Mauna Kea Summit & Stars Adventure, an eight-hour journey that whisked us from sea level to the 13,796-foot pinnacle of Mauna Kea, the highest point in the islands.

From war and worship to fishing and farming, early Hawaiians' lives were closely tied to nature, including the bright bodies that adorned the night sky. More than 1,500 years ago, the Hawaiians were using the stars, winds and ocean currents to navigate the Pacific.

"They believed the gods created the night sky from a large piece of tapa and scattered the seeds of creation on it," said our guide, Greg Brown. "They believed these seeds of creation were the stars and that the gods in their wisdom placed the brighter stars above the islands they were trying to find."

Over the past 40 years, explorers have constructed 13 observatories atop Mauna Kea to probe the far reaches of space. Sponsored by the United States, Canada, France, United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Taiwan and the Netherlands, these otherworldly domes house the largest and most sophisticated telescopes in existence.

Several factors make Mauna Kea the world's premier site for astronomical research. The atmosphere above the mountain is dry and stable, allowing astronomers to use infrared and submillimeter radiation to view phenomena that wouldn't otherwise be visible because they're surrounded by clouds of gas and dust.

Well below the summit, a meteorological effect known as temperature inversion -- visible as a layer of clouds -- traps moisture and pollutants that normally would rise into the atmosphere. This keeps the summit skies pure and dry; in fact, Mauna Kea averages 300 clear nights per year.

"In addition, working in a very dark setting far from city lights, researchers can study galaxies that lie at the edge of the observable universe approximately 13 billion light-years away," noted Brown. "From Mauna Kea's latitudinal position 19.5 degrees north of the equator, the entire Northern Hemisphere and 80 percent of the Southern Hemisphere can be seen on any given day."

COURTESY OF HAWAII FOREST & TRAIL
Picnic by day and stargaze by night on the Mauna Kea Summit & Stars Adventure.

WE REACHED THE summit in time to see sunset ignite the sky with an explosion of magenta, orange and violet. As the sun slipped into a sea of clouds, the observatories came to life. The roofs of the massive domes rolled open, providing the state-of-the-art telescopes concealed inside with unobstructed overhead vistas.

Notable among these are the twin telescopes, Keck I and Keck II, housed in the United States' W.M. Keck Observatory. Standing eight stories high and weighing 300 tons, they are the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes.

The primary mirror of each Keck telescope measures 33 feet in diameter and is composed of 36 hexagonal segments that work together as a single piece of reflective glass. The telescopes track objects for hours, as the earth turns. Two times per second, to compensate for this subtle but constant movement, a computer-controlled system of sensors and actuators adjusts the position of each segment of the mirrors, an operation that's accurate to four nanometers, or about 25,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Eight miles below the summit, in the parking lot of the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy, Brown set up an 8-inch Celestron telescope for our own private stargazing session.

During the next 90 minutes, he pointed out Mercury, Venus and Saturn; dozens of stars, including the two brightest, Canopus and Sirius; and several constellations, among them Orion the hunter, one of the largest, best known and most easily recognizable of the 88 star configurations in the Milky Way, our galaxy.

"The Milky Way appears to be a white haze across the sky," said Brown, "but it's actually the diffused light of billions of stars that are thousands of light-years away in the distant reaches of the galaxy."

We also learned that galactic black holes result from a spectacular collision of stars, which combine into a body so dense its gravitational field won't let light escape. Because black holes can't be seen even through the most powerful telescopes, astronomers obtain data about them by observing behavior of surrounding stars.

We discovered the sun, 93 million miles away, is the star closest to Earth and that it takes just 8 1/2 minutes for its light to reach us.

We learned that color indicates the temperature of a star.

"Really bright stars burn at such an intense rate that the light they give off is bluish white, very hot and very bright," Brown said. "They tend to burn out fairly quickly, perhaps in a few million years, whereas yellow stars like our sun tend to last billions of years."

While such information is fascinating, the incredible view of the celestial world is what most participants remember about the Mauna Kea Summit & Stars Adventure.

"You can't see stars in most places these days because pollution and electric lights affect the clarity of the sky," said Brown. "Atop Mauna Kea we see the sky the way our ancestors did. It's an amazing show that puts into perspective the mind-boggling size and complexity of the universe and our very small place in it."

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based free-lance writer and Society of American Travel Writers award winner.